nnoyed if he were told he were not a sincere
Christian. He accepts doctrinal statements as he would accept
mathematical formulae, and he takes exactly as much of the Christian
doctrine as suits him. Now when I compare myself with the miller, I
feel that, as far as human usefulness goes, I am far lower in the
scale. I am, when all is said and done, a drone in the hive, eating the
honey I did not make. I do not take my share in the necessary labour of
the world, I do not regulate a little community of labourers with
uprightness and kindness, as he does. But still I suppose that my more
sensitive organisation has a meaning in the scale of things. I cannot
have been made and developed as I am, outside of the purpose of God.
And yet my work in the world is not that of the passionate idealist,
that kindles men with the hope of bettering and amending the world.
What is it that my work does? It fills a vacant hour for leisurely
people, it gives agreeable distraction, it furnishes some pleasant
dreams. The most that I can say is that I have a wife whom I desire to
make happy, and children whom I desire to bring up innocently, purely,
vigorously.

Must one's hopes and beliefs be thus tentative and provisional? Must
one walk through life, never fathoming the secret? I have myself
abundance of material comfort, health, leisure. I know that for one
like myself, there are hundreds less fortunate. Yet happiness in this
world depends very little upon circumstances; it depends far more upon
a certain mixture of selfishness, tranquillity, temperance, bodily
vigour, and unimaginativeness. To be happy, one must be good-humouredly
indifferent to the sufferings of others, and indisposed to forecast the
possibilities of disaster. The sadness which must shadow the path of
such as myself, is the sadness which comes of the power to see clearly
the imperfections of the world, coupled with the inability to see
through it, to discern the purpose of it all. One comforts oneself by
the dim hope that the desire will be satisfied and the dream fulfilled;
but has one any certainty of that? The temptation is to acquiesce in a
sort of gentle cynicism, to take what one can get, to avoid as far as
possible all deep attachments, all profound hopes, to steel oneself in
indifference. That is what such men as my miller do instinctively;
meanwhile one tries to believe that the melancholy that comes to such
as Hamlet, the sadness of finding the world unintelligib